Repealing ACA's individual mandate would save $300B, CBO says

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Dive Brief:

A recently released report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates repealing the ACA’s individual mandate and its related penalties would “reduce the deficit by about $305 billion” between 2015 and 2025.

The agency and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate individual health insurance policy premiums would increase about 20% in all years from 2017 and 2025 under such conditions.

Dive Insight:

While the savings seem nice, not all of the agencies’ predictions are rosy. CBO and JCT estimate that while eliminating the mandate would save a large sum of money, the number of people without health coverage would increase in 2025 by about 14 million people, with a total of 41 million uninsured that year.

“That increase in the uninsured population would consist of roughly 5 million fewer individuals with coverage under Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, 1 million fewer individuals with employment-based coverage, and 8 million fewer individuals with coverage obtained in the individual market (including individual policies purchased through the exchanges or directly from insurers in the nongroup market),” the agencies wrote.